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Crypta Balbi

Perhaps most intriguing of all the branches of the National Museum of Rome, it’s a museum of Medieval Rome and a city-block of the historic centre of Rome wherein a vast portico, the Crypt of Balbus, rose in ancient times. It was an annex of the theatre that Cornelius Balbus had erected in 13 BC and shows the various levels of development in the city’s urban story.

The first floor exhibits chronicle the history of the site through to the Medieval period. The second floor (“Rome from Antiquity to the Middle Ages”) explores the transformation of the city between the V and IX centuries, using thousands of ceramic objects, coins, lead seals, bone and ivory implements, precious stones and tools found on the site.